Women's Network at CBRE

Established in 2005, the CBRE UK Women’s Network is a group of people united in their pursuit to make CBRE a more rewarding place, not just for women but for everyone.

The Women's Network aspires to attract and retain the most talented women, to develop their skills and to aid their success and advancement in the company specifically as well as the real estate industry generally.

 

Some key stats about gender balance at CBRE:

• 1,500+ members of the UK Women's Network
• 30% of fee earners at CBRE are women
• 50% of our Graduate intake are female
• 25% of our Directors are female
• 82% Returners after Maternity Leave (2015-2019)​​​​​​​

 

​Full details of all the activities and initiatives are set out in our three key pillars

Culture

• International Women’s Day - Events held across the country  
• Annual Client Event - Seminar with clients invited across all service lines – Autumn
• A Breakfast With - Meet and hear from senior colleagues providing advice around how they have developed their careers
• Woman's Network Annual Conference - Internal Event held June / July which includes external speakers
• Spotlight Series - Showcasing excellent role models across the business
• Regional Events - Highlighting the benefits of the Women’s Network
• Unconscious bias training 
• Family Friendly policies
• Shared Parental Leave Policy
• ​​​​​Maternity coaching
• Next Generation Program
• Returners Buddy system 
• Gender Pay Gap Report

Talent

• Skill Up Series - Morning or Lunch time presentation – three times a year
• Roundtable Series - Aimed at Associate Directors and below with relevant topics being discussed – quarterly
• Informal Mentoring Programme - Involves female mentors and mentees being matched across the business with colleagues looking for advice around promotion

Market Place 

• Charitable Initiatives - In 2018 raised over £10,000 for Action for Children with our 5 Peaks Lake District Challenge with over 50 people across the business taking on the challenge ‘One Team’. In 2019, raised money for Action for Children with our South Downs Charity Walk.
• Charitable Partnerships - Smart Works (Women's corporate clothing donation), Give and MakeUp (Women's clothing and cosmetic donations), Women's Aid (Women's clothing donation)
• External Partnerships - Real Estate Balance and Daisy Chain

 

 

 

Taking Action

To drive change, we are focusing largely on mid- to long-term activity that will ensure greater female representation in our own organisation, whilst also contributing to improvements across the industry.

We have programmes in place to attract, develop and retain women and drive further progress to reduce our gender pay gap. For example, we have requirements in place for diverse interview and promotion panels, we are using new AI technology to remove gender bias from job descriptions, we are working towards greater diversity in our ‘Next Generation’ programmes and Unconscious Bias training is now mandatory for all recruiting and people managers. We are also using data more effectively to track the career paths of women at all levels to create programmes to sponsor, mentor and retain women.

Our Women’s Network continues to have an impact - implementing mentorship, networking and career development programmes and advising on our policies so women are best able to develop their careers. We remain committed to embedding flexible working as a key driver to help women to thrive in the workplace.

 

Attracting Women

We are implementing ‘Talent Source’ a global recruitment system to improve our recruitment process and reduce bias. 

We are implementing minimum standards for diverse interview panels, monitoring long list and shortlisting to ensure diverse candidate slates.

We are reviewing job descriptions to remove gendered language.

We have made Unconscious Bias and Inclusion Training for all recruiting and people managers mandatory.

We will work towards ensuring greater diversity in our ‘Next Generation’ programmes including school, intern graduate and apprenticeship programmes.

 

Retaining Women

We strive for no regression on our equality gains and act when this occurs.

We are holding ourselves accountable for improving gender representation, at all levels.

 We are focussing our efforts on our Upper Quartiles which is key in tackling the Gender Pay Gap.

We are using our data to follow the career paths of women in the business and create programmes to sponsor, mentor and retain them.

We are working with our Women's Network to review our policies that support and ensure women thrive in the workplace.

 

Promoting Women

We are ensuring proportionate representation within our talent, learning and development programmes and increasing our investment in women focussed programming.

We are ensuring that interview panels for promotion have diverse representation.

We are committed to ensuring career returners are supported with focussed interventions, coaching and mentoring.

We are committed to embedding flexible working as we build back from the COVID-19 pandemic to mitigate the impact on women’s careers.